Wednesday, March 18

Geek

Time For A Change

So Mio is nearly five years old now.  Still working just fine, but five years is a long time in notebookland, and I'm looking at getting one of these.

/images/Azunyan7000.jpg?size=500x&q=95


3GHz 5th generation Core i7 (up from a 2.13GHz 1st generation Core i3), Radeon, Radeon R7 M270 (up from a Radeon 5650), 16GB RAM (from 4GB), 4GB video RAM (from 1GB), and a 256GB SSD (up? from a 500GB HDD).

And a 3840x2160 IPS touchscreen up from a 1920x1080 TFT nontouchscreen.  Touch I don't care about so much, but 4K IPS on a 15" notebook is very nice.

Only obvious problem is that it lacks dedicated page up/down, home, and end keys.  For editing code, that's a pain.

Update: Ordered.  Azunyan inbound, ETA Tuesday next.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:28 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 128 words, total size 1 kb.

1 I never use those extra keys when I edit text, such as code. You can probably guess why (hint: hjkl).

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Thursday, March 19 2015 01:00 PM (RqRa5)

2 I ordered it.  30% off ending today (in Dell's Australian store), which took it from nice-but-I-don't-really-need-it to well-my-old-notebook-is-five-years-old...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 19 2015 03:27 PM (PiXy!)

3 Interesting point: This is almost exactly twice the DPI of those first 31.5" 4K monitors.  So it's like having an 8K desktop monitor, only someone has covered up 3/4 of it...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 19 2015 03:29 PM (PiXy!)

4 ETA Tuesday. smile
Item No. Description Quantity Unit Price Ex GST
210-ACVG Inspiron 15, 7548 1 1,700.00 1,700.00
203-66531 SMY510176AU-Inspiron 15 1
338-BDFQ Intel Core i7 Label 1
338-BFDR 5th Generation Intel Core i7-5500U Processor (4M Cache, up to 3.00 GHz) 1
379-12846 NO Option Required 1
379-BBCZ for direct order 2
379-BBID 3 in 1 Card Reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC) 1
379-BBPN Integrated HD 720p Webcam with Digital Microphone 1
379-BBVQ Stereo speakers professionally tuned with Waves MaxxAudio(R) Pro 1
391-BBRQ 15.6-inch 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED-Backlit Touch Display with Wide Viewing Angle (IPS) 1
346-BBMG Palmrest 1
320-BBKX LCD back cover for UHD Touch Screen-Silver 1
340-AAPZ Energy Star Compliant 1
340-AAQF My Dell Software 1
340-AAQJ Browser Search Software 1
340-ACBS Document for MUI (English, Khemer, Bahasa Indonesia, Arabic, Spanish) 1
340-ACRD Australia Contact Info Techsheet 1
340-ACRF Australia Warranty Info Techsheet 1
340-AFZC Directship Info 1
340-AJFC Kickstart Product Registration 1
340-AJFD Additional Software 1
340-ANIP Placemat Documentation 1
370-AASU 16GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600MHz (8GBx2) 1
400-ACFX 256GB Mobility Solid State Drive 1
450-AADB 65W AC Adapter 1
450-AALP Power Cord (ANZ) 1
451-BBJL 58 WHr, 4-Cell Battery (integraged) 1
460-BBQJ Shipment Box 1
389-BFHD Regulatory Label 1
389-BFYC Palmrest Label 1
490-BBXW Optical Drive not included 1
490-BCKF AMD Radeon R7 M270 4GB DDR3 1
555-BBWC Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265 2x2 + Bluetooth 4.0 1
555-BCEE Intel 7265 Wireless Card Driver 1
580-ACED English Backlight Keyboard 1
619-AEET Windows(R) 8.1 Pro (64Bit) English 1
627-BBDL Intel Smart Connect HDD Software Driver 1
630-AADC Microsoft(R) Office 2013 Software Image (Multi-Language) 1
630-AAPL Microsoft(R) Office trial 1
631-AALN Windows System Software Driver 1
658-BBTC Dell(TM) Backup and Recovery Basic 1
658-BCCO McAfee(R) Live Safe Image 1
658-BCDW DropBox software 1
640-BBLW Dell(TM) Digital Delivery Cirrus Client 1
525-10085 FastAccess Facial Recognition 4, Digital Delivery 1
525-10197 For Info Only, 9352F-FastAccess Facial Recognition 4, Digital Delivery 1
702-10088 E-Waste Compliance 1
344-21933 ProSupport: 7x24 Technical Support & Assistance: 2Yr 1
344-24711 2Yr ProSupport: NBD Onsite Service 1
344-42344 # Limited Warranty: Yr 1 Mail in Pre-Paid Freight (Labor) 1
344-42345 # Limited Warranty: Yr 1 Mail in Pre-Paid Freight (Parts) 1
344-48206 ##Yr1 ProSupport: Next Business Day Onsite Service 1
344-48207 ##Yr2 ProSupport: Next Business Day Onsite Service 1
842-10017 Technical Support 1
842-10018 For Info Only:Technical Support 1
883-14328 Laptop Batteries Carry 1 Year Warranty Only From Invoice Date 1
883-14329 Dell's Terms and Conditions apply 1
883-15934 Visit http://www.dell.com/contactdell 1
990-21294 FGA NB-OS-BTS Freight Charges(Australia) 1
998-BKRJ Fixed Hardware Configuration 1

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 19 2015 04:10 PM (PiXy!)

5 Still, the price of that thing is... basically in a Kirabook category. I went through a number of laptops and always the cheapest laptops gave me the best service and the most expensive ones - the worst. Well, maybe not exactly how that happened, but invariably they had some unrepairable fault in the core after about 3 years.

The worst offender was probably my old Sony Vaio Z 12". It was the best laptop I had, ever. But one day it had a power circuit failure and that the end of it. Probably cooked one of DC-DCs that took the 18V input. I paid $2500 for it, in 2001 dollars. Same laptop would cost $4000 in 2015. Never again.

Coincidentially, my wife bought a 2011 rendition of that Z, and that, while still working, had a few mechanical issues. The battery in it is held in place by a wooden wedge that I fashioned.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Saturday, March 21 2015 02:36 AM (RqRa5)

6 True, it's not cheap.  At list price it's in Macbook Pro territory, and I'd rather get the Macbook Pro.  But Dell had it on sale for 30% off, and thanks to shifting exchange rates, Apple just put all their Macbook prices up by 15% in the Australian store, so I was looking at $1700 for the Dell and $2700 for the Mac - and $3500 for the Mac with discrete graphics.
Other than that, there's the Lenovo Y50, but I'm not going to buy a Lenovo; they can burn in hell.  And Toshiba have a 4K model of their P50t, but it's not available with an SSD.

I bought two Sony notebooks back in 2010, both inexpensive models, a lightweight 13" model and a full-size 15".  They both still work perfectly, but the lightweight one I used for work is too slow to run my IDE at a reasonable speed.  (That would be IntelliJ on a 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo, for reference.)
Prior to that, I had a Compaq that died just out of warranty, and an HP, now 7 years old, that actually still works electronically but is physically starting to fall apart.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, March 21 2015 04:43 PM (2yngH)

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